Weekly Update #6

The weekly update is here, and January is over!

Last week I talked about doubling down on my plan of creating content and a community of SaaS builders and using that to find new clients, ship content, and teach.

This week I struggled to ship any content. It all felt so much like a slog. Nothing resonated.

I finally had an epiphany on Thursday one what actually sounds like fun content to create. I was chatting with Sarah about "boring React tutorials," and she said:

So why don't I just... do that.

Introducing: Let's Build!

It's a new YouTube series (I mean super new) where I build cool shit and walk through how I'm doing it.

• Skim over obvious things
• Use technology that I love to use
• Write better code faster
• Make cool things on the way and explain what's happening

The problem with tutorials is that they want to teach a concept, and the app is just the vehicle to show it. The app is boring and plain and just needs to be there to demo.

I'm flipping the script – build cool shit and talk about what it takes to make it. In the process, I'll demystify many concepts that people think are hard.

Hint: Most things are easy these days.

Growth

Twitter

YouTube

• Twitter feels like I'm banging my head against an invisible wall. The algorithm keeps changing, and I'm not gaining many followers.
• I'll keep tweeting, but I will focus more energy on YouTube.
• YouTube feels more organic, and with so many people searching, you can get discovered easier.
• Production quality is hard, and I'm still learning how to make good videos and good metadata.
• With enough subscribers, monetization becomes easy.

Freelancing

• I made my first $3,000!
• That project is doing the security and architecture review for a SaaS app. I have access to the code and will dive in this weekend. I imagine it'll take me a couple of weeks to get all my thoughts written down. It's the first money I've officially made freelancing!!
• The SOW with my old company didn't pan out. Even though the internal champion spent a week putting it together, it was nixed. Not high enough priority.
• I did have a good talk with my ex-bosses new company. But it sounds like nothing will happen before "internal meetings," and one of the key players is going on vacation for 2 weeks. So I'll need to follow up relentlessly.
• I'm wrapping up phase 1 of my project with a local environment agency. That will net $3,000 as well.
• Phase 2 will hopefully be ~$25k or so.
• The same agency asked me to specify how long it would take to rebuild one of the apps. I ballparked it between $25-$50 thousand. Hopefully, if they get funding, I'll be their first pick to build it.

SaaS

• This week I spent a lot of time building the public part of gathering feedback for Reiterate.so: https://github.com/reiterate-so/react.
• A simple install and call the hook, and you can send feedback to the app. It took a while to figure out the best way to compile TypeScript these days, but I finally got it all working with Rollup.
• I also spent a little time toying with a secure portal for YouTube Subscribers. The idea is if you subscribe to my channel, then you are allowed access to a portal. I could share code there and other tips that other people don't get.

I'm still worried about the freelancing pipeline. It's probably time to expand the search and get more deals coming in.

That's all for this week!